"A vulnerability is not a vulnerability till somebody discovers it." This sort of rubbish is a rather amusing reflection of corpthink.
It's rather like saying "A law of Physics isn't a law of Physics until somebody discovers it."
A vulnerability is a vulnerability, period... meaning that something is vulnerable. Whether or not anyone's yet realized it's vulnerable is another story.
If you didn't put a lock on your door, would it "not be unlocked" until someone came by and realized that the door lacked a lock?
And don't trot out those WWII arguments. Hitler was killing far and away more people, and faster, than anyone else. He was the most evil critter alive at the time, and so he got axed. However, nowadays, we're in a situation where there are a metric fuckton of "evil dictators" in power throughout the world (primarily in "third world" areas -- read: Africa, Asia, Latin America, parts of the Middle East), and we are attacking not necessarily the worst, but the ones of strategic importance to the Republican Party.
Watch the far right go absolutely ape-shit on this one.
Note to any far-right-wingers reading this (by any odd chance): Please, PLEASE don't start a war with the North Koreans. Kim Jong Il is crazy. Please, PLEASE don't threaten a crazy man.
Sad thing is, he's right when he claims that they need the weapons as a defense against the US. Our current President thinks he's a cowboy, and treats every encounter with a nation that doesn't agree with us as a showdown in front of the OK Corral. He thinks he's the guy wearing the badge and they're the evil felon in all black... Well, it ain't that simple. North Korea might be evil, but the US is evil too. Just less evil (arguably) and evil in different ways.
North Korea doesn't, for instance, operate a huge network of sweatshops all around the world to supply its uncaring citizens with cheap clothing. It doesn't sell its citizens massively fattening foods and mindless TV that attempts to turn the whole country into a giant farm of happy, mindless, fat cash cows for a few select billionaires to milk dry. The US (specifically, its businesses, with the tacit approval-- or at least complete lack of viable disapproval-- of its government) does those things, however.
American businesses are just slightly less corrupt than North Korean politicians. And have a whole boatload more power over the world at large.
The US vs. North Korea is not white vs. black. It's gray vs. slightly darker gray.
Maybe Microsoft will designate some University in Washington as the providers of the only "official" operating system programming education, or something stupid like that?
Maybe SCO will designate some law school as the only "official" corporate lawsuit education providers?
I love how, because they are a huge heartless titan in the game world, they have the gall to claim that they're the only ones who can name "official" game dev educational programs.
I just hope this doesn't start a trend. Furthermore, I hope nobody will take their claims seriously; unfortunately, most PHB-types, who blindly follow the Industry Leader, will just nod and accept what they say. Likewise, if Microsoft designated an "official operating systems college", they'd just accept it, and alter their hiring practices accordingly...
Employers don't understand squat. Employers feel that you need a CS degree to, for instance, implement a small e-commerce system, or install Apache, or upgrade a Solaris system. Employers don't know the difference between "Red Hat" and "Linux". Half of them don't even understand that "Microsoft", "Office" and "Windows" are not synonyms. (e.g. "Yeah, this computer runs Microsoft XP" or "Just open that Word file in the Microsoft.")
Employers are always asking me "Wow, so did you learn all this stuff in school?"
The mere fact that they ask such things ("Did you learn all this [really practical stuff] in school?") shows that they know absolutely zero about what actually goes on in school.
They do not teach you in school how to quickly whip up a Perl script to solve an emergency need, or how to install OpenBSD on an old SPARC, or how to install VNC, or any of the other "more typical" computer-related tasks that I (and people like myself) actually do, both at work and at home, on a daily basis.
They might teach you how to write a decent Algol interpreter for an IBM mainframe. (That was the sort of theoretical jibba-jabba my Profs were obsessed with in school.)
We need more than a demonstration. We need to ORGANIZE. It's almost impossible to oppose a giant conglomeration of rich technology corporations; it's slightly less almost-impossible with a visible "show of force".
There needs to be an umbrella group devoted to uniting everyone against software patents in Europe. And there needs to be one now, or sooner or later (my money's on "sooner") we are going to lose this battle.
Once Europe falls to software patents, it's all over. There's no way in Hell Japan wouldn't follow suit (if they haven't already), and as I understand the Aussies (and probably the Kiwis too) have already followed the US's lead.
Once software patents are legally enforced all over the "civilized world", small programmers will pretty much be completely powerless (as opposed to the "mostly powerless" we are now).
The average Windows "power user" (and the average Windows "admin") has some vague notion of "Unix" (and by extension "Linux") as something you run on a mainframe.
They can't comprehend the idea of Linux running on a cheap $299 eMachines box. Let alone a laptop, a palmtop, an embedded system...
1: Ever try it over a cellular modem? How about another low-bandwidth "for emergency use" device?
2: Give me a script to "find that program I found on LockerGnome last week that I left hanging on the Start Menu somewhere".
3: How about a script to say "If the uptime is greater than 30 days, reboot the machine." And then the corresponding startup script: "Upon reboot, forcibly restart X problematic service which refuses to start correctly the first time. Manually start services Y, Z and A which depend upon X. Send an email to admin@BlahBlah.com with a report on current disk space available, the time the bootup sequence began, the time the bootup sequence ended, and the total elapsed time for the bootup sequence."
All rather trivial in Unixland. Can you do it in Windows-land? Can you do it WITHOUT Services For Unix? How about WITH?
Firstly, CygWin doesn't run Linux binaries. One could theoretically build a Linux emulation core around it-- something like WINE, where Linux system calls are actually caught by the middleware and passed along to a rather heavily modified CygWin (which implements many Un*xlike system calls) to execute... However, this would no longer be Cygwin, but a whole new beast.
Secondly, they'd have to release the source to any changes back to the community (presuming they actually wanted to release this "Linux emulation layer" feature;) ). I doubt they'd do this.
Thirdly, this would raise a big stink. RMS himself might step out to chastize MS if they did something like this.
Fourthly, they'd never do something like this. They already have the (backwardsly-named) MS Services for Unix, and they'll likely stick doggedly to it.
By the way, "i.e." means "that is"; "e.g." means "for example". I think you meant "e.g." (which would also have made "for instance" redundant).
I've yet to see a MS-sponsored (or MS-endorsed...) "study" on the TCO of GNU/Linux-based systems versus the TCO of Microsoft Windows that factors in such things as:
How Linux admins can easily administrate more machines per person-hour, due to the nature of Unix/Linux's remote administration (and don't even get me started on VNC or Terminal Services; they aren't scriptable, they aren't as bandwidth-effective, etc. etc. etc...), than Windows admins?
The "hidden" costs of lost time due to (A) protecting against adware/spyware/malware/viruses/pop-ups, or (B) actually disinfecting machines that got infected anyhow.
The "hidden" costs of downtime due to buggy MS software. Sure, F/OSS stuff has bugs too, but when it does, at least the admin can try to fix them. When MS software is buggy, the admin is 100% at MS's mercy to fix the bug (since, being closed source, MS software is often 100% unfixable to anyone outside MS...)
The "hidden" costs of dealing with "hacked" IIS servers (vs. Apache).
And a further question: Do Linux geeks really pull in that much more money salary-wise than Windows geeks!? find this claim hard to swallow, especially in today's economy. I call BS. Show some proof.
I went to a major public University in the Midwest (with a huge National Merit Scholar program) in 1997. I left in 1999 because I couldn't hack it. Why? Because it was virtually 100% theory. It was absolutely not "Java Vocational Training". The overwhelming majority of what they forced CS majors to take simply to get a BS in CS had zilch to do with "vocational (read: practical) training".
Examples:
* FOUR (yes, count 'em, FOUR) levels of Calc.
* Engineering Math
* Discrete Math
* Linear Algebra
* Circuit Design
All of this crap to get a BS in CS-- the degree considered "the standard" degree expected by clueless HR managers (the sorts who think "Linux", "Red Hat", "Unix" and "Solaris" are completely different skill sets, since they're different buzzwords on their little checklists) for aspiring Unix sysadmins or generic Perl/PHP/Oracle/PostgreSQL/MySQL/Java hackers.
We spent more time discussing what Knuth was theorizing about creating optimizing belly-button-lint compilers using Ada or Algol in 1967 than about anything practical/vocational.
Although I was a National Merit Scholar and had an SAT score of 1540 (800 Verbal/740 Math), I couldn't hack it, since (A) Math has given me nightmares ever since one particularly awful Calc teacher in HS, and (B) in 20 years of coding, I've never had a need for any math higher than Trig, and Trig only once.
Put simply, it was so mind-numbingly theoretical, I couldn't stand it. I couldn barely even keep awake while listening to these men with thick Indian, Chinese and Russian accents babbling on about highly theoretical concepts I'd never use in my job in a billion years. Vocational? No, it was pure theory. It was pure, unadulterated, Knuth-worshipping, Algol-laced, IBM-hulking-giant, pseudocode-based theory.
And at this school, you had to take so much flippin' math and theoretical gibberish to get a BS in CS, you automatically qualified as a Math minor. You simply had to go down to the office and fill out a form to get a Math minor.
To this day, I have nightmares (literally) about Calculus. And now this joker trivializes the unfulfilling and impractical experience I had in college as "Java vocational training"?
Maybe it is today... but it sure as hell wasn't when I tried to make my degree back in '97...
Off topic? It was an ON-TOPIC response to a troll. It was also meant as humorous. As in, us geeks don't even know how to say "Super Bowl". Ha ha, very funny.
Why are the mods here obsessed with downmodding things?
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I never said we don't have it well.
I did say we lack "choice". I also did say that we are evil too, in our own way. And I will stand by both of those assertions.
"A vulnerability is not a vulnerability till somebody discovers it." This sort of rubbish is a rather amusing reflection of corpthink.
It's rather like saying "A law of Physics isn't a law of Physics until somebody discovers it."
A vulnerability is a vulnerability, period... meaning that something is vulnerable. Whether or not anyone's yet realized it's vulnerable is another story.
If you didn't put a lock on your door, would it "not be unlocked" until someone came by and realized that the door lacked a lock?
There are many, many countries out there with huge hunger problems-- some have far worse, I'd wager, than anything in North Korea.
You are upset by the situation in North Korea simply because they're "commies".
Why don't you focus some of that energy towards educating people about hunger in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa?
What's rational about declaring war?
And don't trot out those WWII arguments. Hitler was killing far and away more people, and faster, than anyone else. He was the most evil critter alive at the time, and so he got axed. However, nowadays, we're in a situation where there are a metric fuckton of "evil dictators" in power throughout the world (primarily in "third world" areas -- read: Africa, Asia, Latin America, parts of the Middle East), and we are attacking not necessarily the worst, but the ones of strategic importance to the Republican Party.
Try:
Americans most definitely have a post in their eyes (this is a Bible reference; Google it
Oh, but they can. And many of them can even spell quite well. Some are even disturbingly witty and charismatic. See their hangout.
Watch the far right go absolutely ape-shit on this one.
Note to any far-right-wingers reading this (by any odd chance): Please, PLEASE don't start a war with the North Koreans. Kim Jong Il is crazy. Please, PLEASE don't threaten a crazy man.
Sad thing is, he's right when he claims that they need the weapons as a defense against the US. Our current President thinks he's a cowboy, and treats every encounter with a nation that doesn't agree with us as a showdown in front of the OK Corral. He thinks he's the guy wearing the badge and they're the evil felon in all black... Well, it ain't that simple. North Korea might be evil, but the US is evil too. Just less evil (arguably) and evil in different ways.
North Korea doesn't, for instance, operate a huge network of sweatshops all around the world to supply its uncaring citizens with cheap clothing. It doesn't sell its citizens massively fattening foods and mindless TV that attempts to turn the whole country into a giant farm of happy, mindless, fat cash cows for a few select billionaires to milk dry. The US (specifically, its businesses, with the tacit approval-- or at least complete lack of viable disapproval-- of its government) does those things, however.
American businesses are just slightly less corrupt than North Korean politicians. And have a whole boatload more power over the world at large.
The US vs. North Korea is not white vs. black. It's gray vs. slightly darker gray.
Maybe Microsoft will designate some University in Washington as the providers of the only "official" operating system programming education, or something stupid like that?
Maybe SCO will designate some law school as the only "official" corporate lawsuit education providers?
I love how, because they are a huge heartless titan in the game world, they have the gall to claim that they're the only ones who can name "official" game dev educational programs.
I just hope this doesn't start a trend. Furthermore, I hope nobody will take their claims seriously; unfortunately, most PHB-types, who blindly follow the Industry Leader, will just nod and accept what they say. Likewise, if Microsoft designated an "official operating systems college", they'd just accept it, and alter their hiring practices accordingly...
Employers don't understand squat. Employers feel that you need a CS degree to, for instance, implement a small e-commerce system, or install Apache, or upgrade a Solaris system. Employers don't know the difference between "Red Hat" and "Linux". Half of them don't even understand that "Microsoft", "Office" and "Windows" are not synonyms. (e.g. "Yeah, this computer runs Microsoft XP" or "Just open that Word file in the Microsoft.")
Employers are always asking me "Wow, so did you learn all this stuff in school?"
The mere fact that they ask such things ("Did you learn all this [really practical stuff] in school?") shows that they know absolutely zero about what actually goes on in school.
They do not teach you in school how to quickly whip up a Perl script to solve an emergency need, or how to install OpenBSD on an old SPARC, or how to install VNC, or any of the other "more typical" computer-related tasks that I (and people like myself) actually do, both at work and at home, on a daily basis.
They might teach you how to write a decent Algol interpreter for an IBM mainframe. (That was the sort of theoretical jibba-jabba my Profs were obsessed with in school.)
Ceren. 'Nuff said.
We need more than a demonstration. We need to ORGANIZE. It's almost impossible to oppose a giant conglomeration of rich technology corporations; it's slightly less almost-impossible with a visible "show of force".
There needs to be an umbrella group devoted to uniting everyone against software patents in Europe. And there needs to be one now, or sooner or later (my money's on "sooner") we are going to lose this battle.
Once Europe falls to software patents, it's all over. There's no way in Hell Japan wouldn't follow suit (if they haven't already), and as I understand the Aussies (and probably the Kiwis too) have already followed the US's lead.
Once software patents are legally enforced all over the "civilized world", small programmers will pretty much be completely powerless (as opposed to the "mostly powerless" we are now).
The average Windows "power user" (and the average Windows "admin") has some vague notion of "Unix" (and by extension "Linux") as something you run on a mainframe.
They can't comprehend the idea of Linux running on a cheap $299 eMachines box. Let alone a laptop, a palmtop, an embedded system...
And if you enable Windows Scripting Host, doesn't that open the door to a whole slew of exploits/viruses/adware/malware/whatever?
I don't even think the salaries are much different at entry-level positions.
If you (or anyone else) disagrees, you're welcome to respond to my Calling of the BS...
*cough* Last updated: May 28, 2001.
Read the freaking grandparent! I'm responding directly to what was written there.
1: Ever try it over a cellular modem? How about another low-bandwidth "for emergency use" device?
2: Give me a script to "find that program I found on LockerGnome last week that I left hanging on the Start Menu somewhere".
3: How about a script to say "If the uptime is greater than 30 days, reboot the machine." And then the corresponding startup script: "Upon reboot, forcibly restart X problematic service which refuses to start correctly the first time. Manually start services Y, Z and A which depend upon X. Send an email to admin@BlahBlah.com with a report on current disk space available, the time the bootup sequence began, the time the bootup sequence ended, and the total elapsed time for the bootup sequence."
All rather trivial in Unixland. Can you do it in Windows-land? Can you do it WITHOUT Services For Unix? How about WITH?
Firstly, CygWin doesn't run Linux binaries. One could theoretically build a Linux emulation core around it-- something like WINE, where Linux system calls are actually caught by the middleware and passed along to a rather heavily modified CygWin (which implements many Un*xlike system calls) to execute... However, this would no longer be Cygwin, but a whole new beast.
;) ). I doubt they'd do this.
Secondly, they'd have to release the source to any changes back to the community (presuming they actually wanted to release this "Linux emulation layer" feature
Thirdly, this would raise a big stink. RMS himself might step out to chastize MS if they did something like this.
Fourthly, they'd never do something like this. They already have the (backwardsly-named) MS Services for Unix, and they'll likely stick doggedly to it.
By the way, "i.e." means "that is"; "e.g." means "for example". I think you meant "e.g." (which would also have made "for instance" redundant).
- How Linux admins can easily administrate more machines per person-hour, due to the nature of Unix/Linux's remote administration (and don't even get me started on VNC or Terminal Services; they aren't scriptable, they aren't as bandwidth-effective, etc. etc. etc...), than Windows admins?
- The "hidden" costs of lost time due to (A) protecting against adware/spyware/malware/viruses/pop-ups, or (B) actually disinfecting machines that got infected anyhow.
- The "hidden" costs of downtime due to buggy MS software. Sure, F/OSS stuff has bugs too, but when it does, at least the admin can try to fix them. When MS software is buggy, the admin is 100% at MS's mercy to fix the bug (since, being closed source, MS software is often 100% unfixable to anyone outside MS...)
- The "hidden" costs of dealing with "hacked" IIS servers (vs. Apache).
And a further question: Do Linux geeks really pull in that much more money salary-wise than Windows geeks!? find this claim hard to swallow, especially in today's economy. I call BS. Show some proof.I went to a major public University in the Midwest (with a huge National Merit Scholar program) in 1997. I left in 1999 because I couldn't hack it. Why? Because it was virtually 100% theory. It was absolutely not "Java Vocational Training". The overwhelming majority of what they forced CS majors to take simply to get a BS in CS had zilch to do with "vocational (read: practical) training".
Examples:
* FOUR (yes, count 'em, FOUR) levels of Calc.
* Engineering Math
* Discrete Math
* Linear Algebra
* Circuit Design
All of this crap to get a BS in CS-- the degree considered "the standard" degree expected by clueless HR managers (the sorts who think "Linux", "Red Hat", "Unix" and "Solaris" are completely different skill sets, since they're different buzzwords on their little checklists) for aspiring Unix sysadmins or generic Perl/PHP/Oracle/PostgreSQL/MySQL/Java hackers.
We spent more time discussing what Knuth was theorizing about creating optimizing belly-button-lint compilers using Ada or Algol in 1967 than about anything practical/vocational.
Although I was a National Merit Scholar and had an SAT score of 1540 (800 Verbal/740 Math), I couldn't hack it, since (A) Math has given me nightmares ever since one particularly awful Calc teacher in HS, and (B) in 20 years of coding, I've never had a need for any math higher than Trig, and Trig only once.
Put simply, it was so mind-numbingly theoretical, I couldn't stand it. I couldn barely even keep awake while listening to these men with thick Indian, Chinese and Russian accents babbling on about highly theoretical concepts I'd never use in my job in a billion years. Vocational? No, it was pure theory. It was pure, unadulterated, Knuth-worshipping, Algol-laced, IBM-hulking-giant, pseudocode-based theory.
And at this school, you had to take so much flippin' math and theoretical gibberish to get a BS in CS, you automatically qualified as a Math minor. You simply had to go down to the office and fill out a form to get a Math minor.
To this day, I have nightmares (literally) about Calculus. And now this joker trivializes the unfulfilling and impractical experience I had in college as "Java vocational training"?
Maybe it is today... but it sure as hell wasn't when I tried to make my degree back in '97...
SlashDot: Jews for nerds. Stuff that's farklempt. *dodges tomatoes*
God damn, I wish I was a moderator right now so I could mod you down (-1, Off-topic).
Off topic? It was an ON-TOPIC response to a troll. It was also meant as humorous. As in, us geeks don't even know how to say "Super Bowl". Ha ha, very funny.
Why are the mods here obsessed with downmodding things?
Is this some "hyper bowl" thing or somewhaT?
i'Ve aLWaYs wOndEReD.